07-27-2004, 06:48 PM
<em>they were probably made in one workshop and distributed across the empire. (As opposed to a unit making it's own.) Does anyone have any more info on that? What time period was this? Did the workshop make the whole cover, or just the decoration? Did this sort of centralized manufacturing occur for other equipment?</em><br>
<br>
Geocentric notions don't really work for Roman military equipment and all the available evidence (admittedly not much) points towards local production (mainly by the army themselves) rather than any centralised system and are often driven by comparison with anachronistic 'parallels'. The exception to this seems to have been the <em>patera/trulla/trullus</em> (or whatever the trendy name is for frying pans these days) which were mainly made in bronze (not brass) in Italy and shipped round the empire to the army. Centralisation certainly appears in the later empire.<br>
<br>
This whole issue will be discussed in some depth in a certain forthcoming book ;-)<br>
<br>
Mike Bishop <p></p><i></i>
<br>
Geocentric notions don't really work for Roman military equipment and all the available evidence (admittedly not much) points towards local production (mainly by the army themselves) rather than any centralised system and are often driven by comparison with anachronistic 'parallels'. The exception to this seems to have been the <em>patera/trulla/trullus</em> (or whatever the trendy name is for frying pans these days) which were mainly made in bronze (not brass) in Italy and shipped round the empire to the army. Centralisation certainly appears in the later empire.<br>
<br>
This whole issue will be discussed in some depth in a certain forthcoming book ;-)<br>
<br>
Mike Bishop <p></p><i></i>
